Auction For .Shop Is Set For Tomorrow

An Auction will be facilitated by Power Auctions LLC on 27 January 2016 to resolve string contention for one new generic top-level domain (gTLD) contention set: SHOP.

This set was previously identified as an indirect contention set consisting of both the SHOP and SHOPPING strings.

The applicants for .SHOPPING have resolved their contention amongst themselves, eliminating the linkage between SHOP and SHOPPING. Uniregistry won the rights to .shopping.

The remaining contention set is a direct contention set for the string SHOP. Seven applicants for .SHOP have completed all necessary prerequisites to participate in the Auction, and the Auction will proceed on 27 January 2016.

Within seven days after the completion of the Auction, the results, including a results report, will be posted to the Auction Results page of the New gTLD Microsite. In addition, the Auction Proceeds page will be updated within seven days to reflect the proceeds and costs related to the Auction.

About Konstantinos Zournas

Konstantinos studied Computer Engineering and Computer Science in London and lives in Athens, Greece. He loves domains and building websites. He is online since 1995, learned about html in 1996 and got into domains in 2002. He started the OnlineDomain.com blog in 2012.

4 comments

This auction is immoral and unfair. ICANN knows this. Not only have they violated their own policy of withholding the auction when someone files motion to, but they manipulated and squeezed $7Million out of private companies who do not have the audience such as corporations like Google and Amazon, so this is such an absorbent amount for an independent company.
Still yet, the independent company never complained and went with the flow for 16 years now. It passed every community evaluation for 16 years save for the last one (to which ICANN did not provide a reason, again violating their policy and SOP).
The dot shop domain space was promised to this company numerous times over the past 16 years on 2004, and 2006, and 2008, and then again in 2013, and finally this company is talking to have a federal judge step in to settle this matter.
This company has the money, resources, and effectiveness to run dotshop, as it currently runs a multimillion dollar internet based company with NO outside donations.
This is unfair and greedy of ICANN. This federal judge will ask that the $7Million of the owners own money that had been put into securing this over the past 16 years be returned to him, in addition to his part of the money that the auction produces. He was essentially tricked and misled for 16 years into believing that he would be given what was promised to him as they demanded still more and more money.
I can only hope that this thing sells for $50 M at least so he can get some of his income back that he had spent on this over the past 16 years of his life.